Description

BASIS was developed by British Airways in the early 1990's as a computer database for the recording and actioning of flight crew air safety reports and, subsequently, safety reports from other employee groups. Each part of the system was identified as 'modules', the most widely adopted being "Air Safety Reports"(ASR). During the initial development process, the existing British Airways Flight Data Analysis programs which had originally been developed for autoland validation were added to the BASIS framework as additional modules. However, most external users of the BASIS system purchased only one or more of the 'reporting' modules.

In the late 1990's British Airways began to develop an upgraded version of the reporting modules of BASIS called "eBASIS" which replaced 'BASIS' for British Airways own use. At the same time, external BASIS customers were supplied with a similarly updated but more flexible version of the reporting modules called "WinBASIS" and this continued to be a very widely used safety management tool. More recently, WinBASIS was sold to Mercator, the IT division of Emirates Airline, and they have completed a further significant upgrade of the product for Users which has been named "SENTINEL".

The Flight Data Analysis programs which were for a time incorporated into the BASIS system have been continually upgraded to the latest standards and are now run separately again and are used by British Airways and by a few external customers. There has been little external sales effort for these programs in recent years, but it may still be possible to obtain them.

Further Reading

• GAIN - Methods & Tools for Airline Flight Safety Analysis - in which British Airways Safety information System (BASIS) is referred to as one of the big three Safety Event and Reporting Tools, along with AVSiS and Aviation Quality Database (AQD).